Playing To Win? Patriots Play Says Otherwise
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Posted Under: 1999 Patriots Season
HOME > Patriots Blog > 1999 Patriots Season
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — When you the fan root for a particular team, you usually figure that the team you root for wants to win.
And unless you backed the 1919 White Sox, or the Baltimore Colts on Week 13 of 1977, or the 1988 Cincinnati Reds, that’s pretty much what you can expect. Why would any fan paying their hard-earned money to see that team expect otherwise?
With Boston teams, it isn’t whether or not they want to win. It’s how much legend they create by losing. Be it a ground ball through the legs or a lousy roughing-the-passer call, Boston losses in high-profile games are usually the stuff that give bards and balladeers their call in life.
The trouble is, one might wonder if these Patriots are adding a new meaning to the word “legend”.
Many Jet fans thought Bill Parcells was tanking the season after a 1-6 start. His “destitute” team just ripped off three straight wins before falling today to the division leading (to those of you just waking up from a two-year coma, don’t faint when I say this) Colts. The Jets held Peyton Manning and his vaunted offense to just 13 points today. Not a bad effort from the 1996 AFC Champs.
Parcells is not tanking this season. But the Patriots may be.
These three division losses following a 6-2 start can mean only one thing. Pete Carroll is back on the hot skillet again. And many fans want to throw Bobby Grier in the fire as well. And Ernie Zampese. And Steve Sidwell. But Carroll is the front man here, and he will get most of the bad copy as long as this losing continues.
And this perhaps suits the players just fine. Never mind it being unprofessional. That’s just plain scary.
It all started a few weeks ago with this column by Will McDonough of the Globe. Naturally, McDonough quoted anonymous sources, but he claimed that there were major factions of players who would love to see Carroll leave at the end of the year.
This is the sort of stuff that many folks will just dismiss as “written just to sell papers and start arguments”, which are the two foremost tasks of any newspaper reporter. You’d have to be an idiot to let McDonough quote you directly on such a mutinous charge. But if McDonough is to be believed, one could make a case that that is exactly what is going on behind the scenes in the Patriot clubhouse.
Today’s 17-7 loss to Buffalo is bad enough. It reduces the Patriots’ playoff chances even further. It is still another division loss, leaving the Patriots at a dismal 2-4 in the Best Division In Football. Drew Bledsoe was again sacked more than a bunch of Idaho potatoes. While the defense generally played well enough to win, the offense again looked more like the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That was the bunch that moved coach John McKay to say “I’m all for it!” when asked “What do you think about the execution of your offense?”
But if you dissect this game, and this week in general, you can get a sense that perhaps McDonough wasn’t trying just to stimulate sales and fodder for Monday morning break room conversation. This is a team that has gone 180 degrees from its previous form, and you can’t figure out why. Except maybe that the players want it this way.
Only on the Patriots can you find a fight at a charity dinner. This week, Lawyer Milloy and Vincent Brisby got into a set-tee over a pool game at a charity bash hosted by Willie McGinest. With perhaps the most important game in Carroll’s coaching tenure this weekend, doesn’t it strike you as funny that this sort of thing happens this week? If the players really wanted to rally around their coach, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen at all, let alone this week.
Then the next day, Terry Glenn is late for practice. Glenn pays the price by sitting out the first quarter today. More on this later.
Now, to the game. Here is each mega-critical moment, and how it relates to the argument of this article.
In the first quarter, Buffalo has the ball at their own 49. Doug Flutie heaves one deep down the middle. Chris Carter is in single coverage on Eric Moulds, and you’ll have to call Sidwell up and ask why. The ball was thrown into a heavy wind, and the ball died. Carter came back to the ball, and the ball hit him right in the 4-2. Only Carter let it bounce off his shoulder pads. Incomplete, no pick.
Okay, Carter was flagged for interference. He held Moulds, which is the only way Carter can cover anyone, so no gripe there. But when an NFL receiver, defensive or offensive, has the ball hit him in the numbers, 99.9% of those are simply caught. C’mon, Chris. Were you trying to catch the ball?
On to period two. The Patriots have the ball at the Bills’ 25. On 1st and 10, Bledsoe drops back and hits Ben Coates in the right flat. Coates rumbles all the way to the four-yard-line. The only problem is that Big Ben plowed over Kenny Irvin along the way. Coates was chastised by CBS’s Dan Dierdorf for not knowing how to hit a DB and not make it so obvious. Does this mean that Coates wanted to flatten Irvin just to draw a flag? This might be a reach, but Coates just massacred Irvin.
On the next play, Bledsoe rolled right and nailed a sliding Irvin with a perfect pass. He overthrew Troy Brown, but laid it right in there to Irvin. Oops, there’s that word “overthrow” again. In better days, no way Bledsoe misses Brown in that range. Simply no way. Is Bledsoe really this far off his game? Remember, this is the same quarterback who beat Buffalo last year at home with the greatest last-minute rally in team history with a broken finger.
Later in the quarter, Bledsoe has a 1st and 10 at his own 15. He rolls right, outside the tight end, then throws the ball into the ground. Then he jumps and screams at referee Ed Hockuli because he can’t believe he’s been flagged for intentional grounding. You mean to tell me that Bledsoe suddenly forgot that on that kind of play, you have to throw the ball towards the line of scrimmage instead of literally spiking it? Is something fishy here?
Just before halftime, Flutie connects with Moulds on a 54-yard TD bomb. Moulds walks in all alone because Steve Israel fell down as Moulds caught the ball. I don’t buy this. Israel has been a great counterpart for Ty Law all year long. Looking at the play, Israel just plain fainted in thin air as Moulds went for the ball. Anyone remember the “Florida Flop” in 1971? This is the “Israel Ice Patch” play. You slip on an ice patch. Get it?
As the teams run off the field for halftime, CBS’s Bonnie Bernstein (eat your heart out, Phyllis George) interviews Carroll. She asks why Glenn sat out the first quarter. Carroll mumbles “Not saying, bye!” and ran away quickly. What Carroll said may have lost a bit in the translation, but it is clear that he was uncomfortable talking about it.
This may reveal what most fans fear, and that is that Carroll is afraid to discipline his team. Most coaches would have given a non-answer like “That’s a private matter, I have no comment!” and said it proudly. Instead, Carroll wimped out on the question and slipped away like a scared boy being chased by a bully. You can bet that the entire team will know about this, and perhaps snicker in private. Carroll was petrified in disciplining Glenn for being late to practice, and it showed clearly when asked by Bernstein.
Bledsoe’s worst pass of the day came in the third quarter. On a 3rd and 4 at the Buffalo 38, Bledsoe lined up in the shotgun. His line gave him literally all day to survey the field. But he fired a flubber ball downfield that missed a wide-open Brown by three feet, and was nearly picked off by Irvin. Again, how does a quarterback of Bledsoe’s calibre miss a throw like this, and so badly? You can say that Bledsoe’s confidence is shaken by the events of the last three weeks, but given what Bledsoe can do, it’s hard to believe that.
The most insidious play of the day came on the 31-yard touchdown catch by former Patriot Sam Gash. Gash caught a pass in the right flat and took off down the right sideline. Andy Katzenmoyer had the angle on Gash, but he merely wrapped his arms around Gash and slid right off of him. Gash then took it the rest of the way.
CBS’s Verne Lundquist used the word “inexplicable”. Katz is a rookie, but this was an easy play for him to make. If nothing else, he has to knock Gash out of bounds. Instead, the Bills have a 17-0 lead. Here’s a rookie who has been on fire all year long, even while learning in the absence of Ted Johnson. If this kid has no heart, nobody does.
Finally, on to the fourth quarter. The Patriots have a 4th and 1 at the Buffalo 48. The Pats are 3-3 on fourth down today, including a nifty fake punt by Lee Johnson. But this time, Bledsoe lines up in the shotgun, then drops back seven steps and waits for someone to get open. You know what comes next. The only thing was that it was Marcellus Wiley, not Bruce Smith. It was the sixth sack of Bledsoe. This one you might blame Zampese for, but Bledsoe was practically saying “Sack me!” by the time Wiley arrived. Watch the tape and see for yourself.
And the play that put the Patriots to sleep for good warranted a pan also. The Bills had 4th and 1 at the Patriots’ 30, there was 1:30 left and New England was out of time outs. Flutie hands off to Jonathan Linton. Gash plows into Tedi Bruschi and moves him back 5 yards with the ease of a tank running over a parked car. Linton gets an easy first down, and they run out the clock. It was too easy.
Nobody is lighting a fire under this team. Their season is going up in flames, and not one player appears to give a darn. Either Carroll really is a non-disciplinarian, or the players just will not play hard for this guy.
One reason why Carroll was let go by the Jets in 1994 was that that team quit on him. In each of his Patriot years, you sense that the players go to sleep in midseason, and wake up at season’s end because they suddenly want to make the playoffs. The coach has nothing to do with this. Injuries, mostly to Bledsoe, prevented a deep playoff run last year. Everyone is healthy this year except for Johnson and Robert Edwards, but this team just will not play.
When you couple this with the 6-2 start, it does make you wonder. At the bye week, the Pats were three points away from 8-0. They had some marvelous last-minute rallies against the Jets and Colts. They had surprisingly tough games with Cleveland and the Giants. But the team seemed to be on the winning track before the week off.
Now, the team has suffered three losses to division rivals, and have looked sick in all three. The offense, particularly the passing offense, has just disappeared. Some folks blame Zampese and his predictability. That may be, but this turnaround was so sudden and dramatic.
The Patriots could still turn things around and finish 10-6 (a loss at Indy and wins everywhere else). But this year, a 10-6 record in the AFC East will get you nothing. The six playoff teams will probably be Seattle, Jacksonville, Tennessee, Miami, Buffalo and Indy. The players perhaps know this. No playoffs, no Carroll. Play hard, win a few games, make the playoffs, Carroll stays. Makes you wonder what choices the players are making.
No player will ever come right out and admit this to your face, unless he threatens you with death if you mention his name. Fine. We’ll do the talking for them.
The Patriots probably are playing for a new coach instead of the playoffs. Are you the fan okay with that?
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